Incident Light Meter

[frasier]

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Hello, I am looking for an incident light meter with very good low light capabilities. Are there any lightmeters that can messure below EV 0 or even lower? I think I read about an old Minolta Autometer II, which should be very good in this respect. Does anybody have experiences with this very modell? My Sekonic L508 is not so good for low light situations ...

Thank you, Jochen

[01af]

... I read about an old Minolta Autometer II, which should be very good in this respect.

It is indeed. So is its immediate predecessor, the Minolta Autometer Professional. Both sport the eminently cool self-rotating dial, and both their metering ranges is EV -4 to EV +17 at ISO 100/21°—only a few light meters can go as low, and none can go lower. With the optional Minolta Booster accessory, they can even go down to EV -7 at ISO 100/21°—that's world record for regular off-the-shelf photographic light meters as far as I can tell. There also are accessory attachments for metering reflected light but these reduce the low-light metering ability by a few stops.

 

The Minolta Auto Meter Professional (very good) and Auto Meter II (even better) are available off eBay for little money (almost) any day. I got a well-used one from eBay for, ummm, 40 Euro or so a few years ago, and as it arrived, the metering results were, and still are, within one or two tenths of an f-stop when compared to a modern Minolta Flash Meter VI—right out of the card-box, no calibration required.